


So Die All Traitors

by Button_House_WiFi



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, I promise, second chapter will be much happier, ye all know what's it about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 12:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20507075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Button_House_WiFi/pseuds/Button_House_WiFi
Summary: A traitor to The Crown has to expect a gruesome and violent end. Rarely anyone that engages in conspiracies and plotting against the King can hope to live to old age. The headman's axe is more often than not their reward.





	So Die All Traitors

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo I should actually be continuing The Association but of course I'm not. Anyway I didn't really get to write recently because I moved country (I'm in Ireland now, Cork to be exact) and I was a bit preoccupied. ANYWHO I wrote Humphrey's execution because I love my snarky son but I also love making myself sad so there you go. And I promise that the second chapter is going to be much more light-hearted.

It was winter and yet the morning was brighter than any summer's day could ever hope to be. The sun reflected off the stark white blanket of snow and frost covering the fields and hills that went over the horizon, the leaf-less trees and the estate that stood enveloped by them all. 

The air was crisp and clean from the cold as he was lead out of the house, his house, by one of the men in the dirty black cloaks. The sounds of their heavy boots driving again and again into the snow that reached up to their knees, and the hiss of the ends of their cloaks dragging over it disturbed the scene of peace and calm that had graced the morning so far. 

Their approach to the backyard of the house startled a robin from its seat in a nearby tree. It excitedly flapped its wings in small bursts of rapid successions, the red patch on its throat looking out of place in the otherwise monochrome landscape. Humphrey followed its zig-zagging flight until it came to land on the block of wood that stood in the middle of the yard. One of his servants sometimes used it to chop firewood. 

He briefly wondered what would become of his servants. Surely employment would be difficult for them now. Who would employ the servant of a Traitor to the Crown?

'Traitor!' and 'Treason!' were the words that had been shouted when the men came kicking down the door this morning, along with some other even more unpleasant and less true exclamations insulting his character, appearance, manhood and lineage. The lackey who had given his offenses to the latter was quickly silenced by the others since Humphrey was, in fact, a close cousin to the King. However, they had taken this particular line of insults up again when they had decided to cast doubt on his legitimacy and called him a muck-blooded bastard and his poor old mother a whore. He had been glad she had passed on the winter before, for if she hadn't then she certainly would have now as such rude behaviour and accusations would surely have caused her fits of hysteria that her poor heart wouldn't have been able to cope with.

King Henry's men were silent now as they approached the block. The robin inclined its little head and regarded the strange party questioningly, and perhaps, Humphrey imagined, with pity in its black eyes. In a way the bird resembled him, with its bright red chest in contrast to the dark wood. Likewise, Humphrey stood out from the group in his scarlet coat, sleeves and doublet between the black executioners. In their hurry the men did not bother to strip him to his breeches and undershirt, as it was custom at executions. The bird gave a last, warning chirrup and flew back into its tree. This time, Humphrey didn't follow its way. Instead, his gaze was captivated by the spot on the wood where the bird had perched just a second ago. 

Suddenly, that weight that had settled in his stomach the second he saw the men arrive on their horses started to try and pull him downwards. He could feel his knees nearly buckle, as if his body had suddenly grown in mass. Particularly the spot just behind the sternum, next to his heart seemed to push and press against his ribcage, seeking an escape as if knowing that its body wouldn't, couldn't run and flee. 

When he heard a throaty chuckle behind him, he realised that his hands trembled and shook where they were bound behind his back.

They came to a halt just before the wooden block. Humphrey closed his eyes and took a deep breath. But just before he could release it again he was hit in the back of his knees with the axe the headman was carrying. It was a monstrous thing, all heavy curved iron and a long handle the middle of which was rubbed shiny with use. As he landed in the snow on his knees one of the men stepped opposite him on the other side of the block. He freed a small scroll from his coat.

'By the decree of His Majesty, King Henry and his court, Humphrey Sperling, first Marquess of Exeter, has hereby been found guilty on the charges of high treason against the crown. He has been sentenced to death by beheading. The sentence is to be executed immediatly.' The man's voice was raspy and yet held a damning weight to it that demanded attention and obediance.

Humphrey had long ago accepted that this was how his end might come about. Deep down, he had always expected the King's men to break down his door any second and put him in handcuffs. That thought had always been at the back of his mind when he had exchanged small sacks of coins in empty corridors in London, when he had sent out servants with a letter and the instruction to keep off the main roads and when he had met up with other Earls and Lords and courtiers and priests in cellars and remote landhouses.

But the abstract thought, awareness and expectation of one's own death can, in the end, not prepare for its actual arrival.

The man rolled the scroll back into a perfect cylinder and passed it to one of the lackeys who stepped back into the half-circle that had formed behind Humphrey. Then, the headman took position to his right. He saw the axe in his peripheral vision but refused to turn his head towards it. Regardless, the shake of his hands spread to rock his shoulders aswell. The pace of his breathing increased rapidly and his vision started to waver, as if it might turn to black any second then.

With the edges of his vision darkening, he didn't see the headman raising the axe to his blistered lips with a toothless grin. The moment his lips touched the metal, however, a white spark flashed between his mouth and the axe and he recoiled with a yelp. The other men shifted. There was no thunderstorm in the air and the sparks occurring on a clear day were highly unusual.

The headman glanced at his fellow men unsurely, and when the man who had read Humphrey's sentence nodded he spread his feet back into a solid stance. He gripped the axe's handle securely with both hands and gave a sign to the man directly behind Humphrey.

He felt two big hands forcefully push his head down to rest on the block and his shoulders further so that the right one was pressed against the side of the wood. This way, his neck was bent at an awkward angle and exposed to the chill of the winter air. 

Humphrey swallowed a panicked sob. Not wanting his last image, the last sight he saw before death to be of the sneering men and the thirst for the axe to sirr downwards in their eyes, he fixed his gaze on one of the dark windows that peeked back at him with a blank and empty stare.

The headman raised the bearded axe above his head. Humphrey saw the distorted reflection of it in the expensive glass he had fitted only last year. Every muscle and sinew in his body assumed a rigid state and his skin fell numb to the cold, to the scratching wool of his clothes and the edge of the wood digging into the side of his throat.

The next movement he registered, however, was the robin returning and landing on the windowsill. It turned its head to the side and looked at him with the same inquisitive look as before. Humphrey looked into the eye that reflected the snow and the trees in its glassy curve. 

He didn't close his eyes when he saw the axe coming down.

-

The little robin lept from the windowsill into the cold air when a heavy thud sounded though the yard and one of the clouds of breath that steamed the air disappeared and the white snow in the middle of the yard turned a scarlet red that spread at a rapid pace around the now headless body after it had recoiled and fallen backwards, away from the wooden block.

One of the men left standing reached down to pick up something from below the blanket of snow and then stretched his arm far above him in the air, raising his dripping find for all to see.

'Behold, the head of a traitor!'

'So die all traitors!'

Several hundred miles from them, yet unseen and unheard, a blizzard began to take form and be carried by the wind, always westwards.


End file.
